Department of Psychology,
The University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7AL.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the
way the subject of Psychology is treated at introductory level in
textbooks; to examine why it appears the way it does in these books;
and to discuss the effect this may have on how the subject is seen by
those who study Psychology through them. The paper aims to look at
some of the practical realities of Psychology courses in universities
and at colleges and the effect of these realities on the producing
and selling of textbooks. The contention is that such practical (as
opposed to academic) factors influence the appearance of textbooks
and that these, in turn, affect how the subject is perceived. These
appearances affect not only Psychologys apparent scope and
curriculum but also its broader image in terms of its appeal, social
relevance and general ease of approach as a discipline
and subject for study at degree level. There is a two-way
relationship between the textbook and the subject. Feeding into this
interaction are the practicalities of the presentation of the subject
at degree level which influence the appearance of textbooks which, in
turn, affect the perception of the subject.

Arguably the first textbook in Psychology,
and certainly the most cited and celebrated, is William James
Principles of Psychology. This was published in 1890, in two
volumes and with more than 1300 pages. Notable texts followed,
including a shortened version of James Principles
(James, 1892), and others by Stout (1899), Ward (1918) and
McDougall (1923). These texts were hardly for a mass market, since at
that time there were four departments of Psychology. Many of the
early textbooks were presumably for a small but growing number of
undergraduates and established academics in related disciplines such
as Philosophy, Physiology, and Education. Furthermore, the texts
could not make reference to many original empirical studies since
there were so few. Rather, they tended to be extensive, and sometimes
difficult, systematisations of the subject written to define the new
field of Psychology and to orientate future study.

The third decade of this century marked a
change in the development of Psychology textbooks. The change could
be said to coincide with the publication in 1921 (1922 in the UK) of
R. S. Woodworths Psychology, A Study of Mental Life.
This book was able to refer more to original sources than could
previous texts. It claims, in the preface, to be aimed at the
beginner. It has diagrams, and exercises at the ends of
chapters. Woodworth was a teacher as well as a researcher and this
text is based on mimeographed sheets used as lecture notes in
introductory classes at Columbia University. It has a different
feel about it compared with the earlier generation of
texts and marks the start of a new generation. It was a widely used
and long-lived text, going through 19 editions until, in 1949, it was
revised by D.G. Marquis in a 20th edition as Woodworth and Marquis
(1949). This, too, was a successful text, still in print in 1963 when
it was published in Methuens University Paperback
series.

R. S. Woodworth was also responsible for one
of the most influential textbooks on purely experimental Psychology.
In 1938 (1939 in the UK) Methuen published his Experimental
Psychology. This book was famously revised and reprinted as
Woodworth and Schlosberg (1950) with a fourth reprint of the 1954
third edition appearing as late as 1966. By the third edition the
appearance of the book was in many ways rather modern and indicative
of things to come. The paper is glossier; there are photographs as
well as diagrams and tables and the text, unlike earlier books, is
printed in two columns per page. The graphics are professionally
executed. (There is an acknowledgement to Frank H. Lee, Professor of
Graphics at Columbia University where Woodworth was a professor.) In
other ways, because the book was more self-consciously styled
according to contemporary fashions, the text font looks dated in a
way that the classic fonts of earlier books do not. Thus a book which
attempted to look modern, and presumably did at the time, has come to
look somewhat more dated than much older texts, thereby proving that
nothing dates like fashion.

By the end of the 1960s textbooks were
beginning to take the form of those currently in use with wide
margins, plenty of white space on the page, portions of the text
separated into boxes, photographs and illustrations, sometimes
incidental to the text and apparently chosen primarily for making the
text attractive. As printing techniques have developed, the
introductory texts have become more uniformly colourful and visually
appealing. Most of these changes came with new textbooks, some
through revisions of old: Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith and Bem (1993),
for example, began life 11 editions ago as Hilgard (1953). Currently,
most Psychology textbooks tend to represent a rather uniform
phenomenon. They are almost exclusively American, large, good value
in student editions, and full of colourful diagrams, photographs and
help and study boxes. The photographs, naturally enough, depict US
culture: family life, street scenes, politicians, institutions and
practices. The use of photographs is extensive; their purpose to make
the text appear more friendly. The photographs illuminate what,
according to the text, research has discovered by showing people
apparently performing that behaviour. The content and captioning of
the pictures tends, accordingly, to be quite incidental and banal.
Overall, the textbooks have a coffee-table feel to them:
one could entertain oneself just by flicking through them, looking at
the photographs and reading the captions. These textbooks are
essentially friendly and indicate a subject of social appeal and
relevance. This may be quite different from the reality of studying
Psychology beyond introductory level, at least in the UK.

Today Psychology is a ubiquitous and
broad-ranging subject which continues to grow in terms of research
output, professional development and popularity as a higher education
subject. Its principal perspectives on behaviour are biological and
neurological, cognitive and information processing, developmental,
social, and clinical and abnormal. It has evolved into professions in
the fields of Clinical, Educational and Occupational Psychology. It
has become an integral part of the training of social workers,
nurses,police officers and managers.

In the UK this growth has been matched by an
enormous increase in the popularity of the subject at undergraduate
level. The first Psychology A levels were taken little
more than 25 years ago. By 1987, 8,000 candidates were sitting the
Associated Examining Boards Psychology A-level and
by 1994 the number had risen to 21,000. The 1980s were
associated with a number of changes in political, social and economic
outlook, which in turn influenced the aspirations and expectations of
graduating students. Accordingly, business studies and law have
become the most popular university courses, but close behind them
comes Psychology.

With the growth in importance and popularity
of Psychology has come an enormous increase in the number and range
of courses teaching it in universities and colleges, together with a
corresponding increase in the number of textbooks produced and sold.
Most Psychology courses in higher education in the UK are three-year
courses with teaching in the first year based at least partly on a
basic textbook. The pattern is slightly different in the USA, the
source of the vast majority of introductory text-books, where the
undergraduate courses are modular and usually last four years. In the
USA, however, the same basic pattern exists, with large first-year
introductory classes based on an introductory textbook

It is almost impossible to state exactly the
numbers studying Psychology in the UK and publishers are
understandably reluctant to give details of their own participation
in this market. The Universities and Colleges Admission Service
(UCAS) lists some 85 institutions offering at least one Psychology
degree course. This would suggest that about 4,000 students in higher
education are studying Psychology. There are possibly another 15,000
students in further education colleges and other establishments
taking A-levels, GNVQ, Access, and professional courses with
Psychology components. This brings the number up to publishers
estimates of around 20,000 introductory Psychology students each
year. At £20 per text, a potential market of about £400,000
would be a reasonable estimate. This is divided between a relatively
short list of fewer than 10 texts, with three probably accounting for
as much as 75%. These front runners in the UK are Atkinson et al.
(1993), Gleitman (1991), and Gross (1992).

It is not obvious why these books should
have made it to the position of front-runners since what is good
about them is more or less shared by many other competitors. Atkinson
et al. and Gleitman both offer comprehensive and up-to-date coverage
of the biological, cognitive, developmental social and pathological
aspects of human behaviour, as do most Psychology texts. They are
both attractive to look at without compromising scholarship; a
feature shared by slightly fewer. Part of the popularity of Atkinson
lies in an authority due quite simply to having been about for so
long. Gleitman, on the other hand is more recent, and certainly has
the individual style of a single-author undertaking. That Gleitman
was educated in Europe before emigrating to the USA may explain
certain uncommon features in his books choice of subject
matter, which might well endear it to British users. For example,
there is an unusually extensive psychoanalytic discussion of
personality and coverage of the biological bases of social behaviour
not found in US texts. US Psychology was never much influenced by the
European tradition of ethology which links social behaviour to its
evolutionary and biological foundations. Gross, on the other hand, is
quite different in having a UK author but having made some moves
towards US production values. Gross is the number one text in UK
colleges teaching A-level and Access courses, but it has as yet made
few if any inroads into the US market.

The UK market is small compared with that in
the USA. The World List of Universities (1990)lists
some 1400 institutes of highereducation in the USA. If only
half of these teach Psychology courses with an average annual intake
of 100, the total US introductory Psychology textbook market would be
70,000 or £1.4million. This is an estimate of university
and college major courses only, in Psychology. In fact,
publishers estimate the number taking introductory Psychology courses
in the US to be as high as 500,000 each year. At £20 per text,
this would indicate a potential market of as much as £10million each year. This market is shared among a fairly small
number of textbooks, with Atkinson et al.(1993) and
Gleitman (1991) and one or two others probably accounting for
more than half of this market, despite the fact that Quereshi
(1993)1counts 52 introductory texts published or
revised between 1980and 1989. Then there is the world
market, since English-language textbooks are used extensively in
Europe, Australia and the Far East. Then there are translations:
Atkinson et al.reports itself to have been translated into
Russian, Spanish, French, Chinese, German and Portuguese. So there is
a large and potentially lucrative market for Psychology textbooks --
and the more appealing the text the more likely it will
sell.

To understand what makes a textbook
appealing and, in turn, the effect the textbooks have on the subject
(as opposed to the subjects effect on the textbooks) one must
consider how and why the textbooks are written, are adopted by the
lecturers and course tutors, and used by student readers.

On how and why they are written, one needs
to consider the immense amount of work, breadth of reading and
understanding required to produce a textbook today in
Psychology.

Psychology is a broad subject in which there
has been an exponential growth in research output in the last 40 or
50 years. It involves disciplines as diverse as physiology,
biochemistry, linguistics and sociology. In the university
departments teaching most of the natural sciences, it might well be
the case that a majority of academics could lecture on several topics
at first-year, and possibly even at second-year levels: not the case
in Psychology departments where the fragmentation of the subject has
led to somewhat isolated sub-disciplines and likewise isolated
sub-disciplinarians.

However, the rewards of encompassing and
integrating these sub-disciplines can be great. A large American
university might have an enrolment of a thousand or more on its
introductory Psychology module and this number alone might make an
introductory text viable, before even considering the national and
international markets. For one (or two) people to author a modern
text is a huge undertaking, notwithstanding the fact that other
textbooks seem to be used as sources for new ones, thus tending to
produce a consensus on Psychologys curriculum. Considerations
of the size of the market, investment of time and the likely reward
possibly lie behind the fact that while there have been introductory
textbooks produced in the UK, they have tended to be authored by
groups of five or six members of a particular department of
Psychology; Wright, Taylor, Davies, Taylor, Sluckin, Lee and Reason
(1970) and Lloyd, Mayes, Manstead, Meudell and Wagner (1984). Such
books have tended to be written by a number of specialists, each
covering his or her own area of Psychology. The books are also more
cheaply produced with none of the colour, friendliness and implied
personal and social relevance characteristic of US
counterparts.

Next, there is the matter of how and why
textbooks might be adopted by introductory course directors who have
not themselves written a textbook. Textbooks are coming more and more
to offer a self-contained course of study with tutors guides,
booklets of seminar and essay topics, computerised test-banks for
assessment, etc. The cost of such marketing, including free
inspection copies for lecturers adopting the book, are built into the
cost of the book, which means that only books with large anticipated
runs can be marketed in this attractive way. With larger class sizes
and increasing pressure on lecturers time, the purchasing of a
course off-the-shelf is becoming increasingly attractive.
A comprehensive textbook saves the time-consuming production of
additional material in the form of photocopied articles and notes. It
also ensures that students can have easy access to information and
are spared the situation of scores, hundreds even, chasing the same
few sources. Part of the answer to how and why the introductory
textbooks are adopted in the USA also involves the choosing of
courses by students. The majority of the takers of an introductory
course in the American modular degree system will be taking it as a
minor rather than a major; hence they will
probably not go on to take more specialised and advanced courses. For
minors the course may well be optional, whereas it would
be compulsory for majors. Campus bookshops tend to have
large piles of introductory course textbooks with the course name,
code timetable and enrolment details displayed above. The appeal of
the text often dictates the appeal of the course and where student
enrolment affects the status and funding of the course, a
user-friendly textbook can increase enrolment numbers.

As to how and why introductory textbooks are
used by the student readers, in the UK and presumably anywhere where
the course is compulsory, the case tends to be simple; students use
whatever book the course organisers have adopted and ordered through
the university or college bookshop. What students would look for if
they had a choice, and do look for when a choice exists, is a text
from which they can easily extract well-prepared and presented
information to back up lecture notes, prepare for seminars, write
essays, and revise for exams. Current introductory textbooks do this
quite well. There is a tendency for Psychology undergraduates to be
more strategic in their studies than they once were and the style of
todays textbooks certainly does not hinder this particular
approach to learning.

So we are left with a popular subject,
producing popular textbooks which, in turn, make the subject more
popular. Students coming into Psychology who have done little more
than peruse a textbook or two, may not be aware of the subjects
technical, methodological and statistical aspects, and of the fact
that it tends to deal with human behaviour and mental life at a level
often far removed from everyday personal and social relevance. They
may be disappointed to find that the attractiveness of the subject
does not match that initially encountered in introductory textbooks.
They are confronted by a literature and image of Psychology steeped
in the idioms, appearances and institutions of another culture and
they may be left with a particular, rather uniform, view of the
syllabus and scope of the subject.

Of course, textbooks from William James
onwards, including Woodworths textbooks, have always
contributed to the appearance and style of the subject in their own
ways. In this sense there is nothing new about the effects of
textbooks on the subject. Perhaps Psychologys textbooks are
still producing a system of psychology just as the early texts in the
subject attempted to. However, part of the system proffered now is
strongly cultural, both at the level of a nation and its
institutions and at the level of subject-appearance. Another part of
the system involves attraction and perceived personal and social
relevance. For better or worse, that is the effect of
Psychologys introductory textbooks on their subject.